DMZ Colony

I always want to hate the poetry collections that I find on awards lists but find myself re-reading passages that speak to me. "DMZ Colony" by Don Mee Choi is no different. It spends a great deal of time describing the relationship between the United States and South Korea and explains the history of the 38th parallel for history novices.The format keeps you from falling into a rut of any sort. We have poems but also narratives from a former political prisoner, Ayn Hak-Sop, in South Korea. His tales sound like those of an oppressed individual, but few have written about his nation's conflicts with Japan and North Korea before. As often as we have read about those who have suffered political injustice, Hak-Sop's pack an emotional punch and put you right there shoved in a tiny cell with 20 people.I feel like a failure when I don't "get" something, and Choi includes odd drawings with Korean inscriptions with the stories from captivity. Once she moves on to the accounts of 8 girls who survived a massacre but lost their parents, the pathos that we covet returns in full force as the author compares their plight to that of modern-day child separation among immigrants.You expect the stories from those who lived through a war-torn Korea to grow stale, but they keep shocking you. You have to give the translators credit for keeping these tales' power, especially those of the orphans. Those who suffered show some seriously anti-American sentiment, the likes of which I have not chosen to read before. One cannot argue that the situation occurred any differently than described, nonetheless.The book will work for you if you enjoy learning about other cultures that would have escaped the bulk of your history curricula. Just don't go in expecting traditional poetry. You hear about oppression (through violence and ideology) in ways that will make you squirm. The book defies classification, and the author seems more interested in telling you about South Korea than she does catering to poetry norms.

startling stroies prisoner abuse prworse in politicallly conflicted Korea.

When I bought this book, I was intrigued by the title and the idea of traveling through poetry to a time of great upheaval in Korea, a time I am not very familiar with, a terrifying time for it's victims. Chio's interviews become missives of pain and shine a light on experiences that defy articulation, but through translation and her lyrical voice, she plays with the words and ideas until they flow like music from the page into understanding, and I think I do understand a little better what the orphans felt, what the Korean journalists held prisoner felt to be hungry, to be beaten; albeit from a chair in my comfortable living room. Choi shines a light on this time in history and reimagines them so we don't forget because we should never forget this type of political strife, and we can only hope that one day we don't suffer the same atrocities in the name of our government.